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Free In the long line of color-match games, Candy Crush Saga is the last spinoff, and the one currently adored by iPhone-owning casual game players everywhere. If you haven't played Bejeweled in a while (or somehow missed that craze), download Candy Crush Saga for free and whip it out the next time you have five minutes to kill.

$9.99%displayPrice% at %seller% At $10, Carcassonne is one of the more expensive iPhone game apps you can buy, but many players will be glad to spend the money on this digital version of a German-style board game. In this social game, you lay tiles and game pieces on a virtual board to build up a medieval landscape. The goal is to own completed developments, like cities, farms, and roads. But unlike that other property-ownership game, Monopoly, Carcassonne is actually fun, thought-provoking, and not too heavily reliant on luck.

Free Crossy Road's gameplay is nothing new. It's just Frogger. Its central joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" is even older. But none of that stopped Crossy Road from being one of 2014's breakout iOS hits. Helping a poor animal avoid busy traffic is a great premise for an endless action game. Elegant social features encourage friendly competitions for high scores without obnoxiously interrupting the single player experience. Plus, who can resist the charm of a world and characters made entirely of colorful cubes?

99 cents%displayPrice% at %seller% Family-friendly Cut the Rope is a casual game that has you solving an obstacle course in each level with simple physics. The name comes from the core game mechanic: A piece of candy swings from ropes that you cut by swiping your finger through them at the right moment. Slice the rope, and the candy drops. Timing is everything, as the goal is to get the candy to a monster that is waiting somewhere else on the level.

$1.99%displayPrice% at %seller% Desert Golfing is the sports game for the fatalist in us all. In this endless expanse of brown, pixelated desert, there's nothing but a ball and a hole. Dragging on the screen putts the ball toward the hole, and the controls provide a surprising amount of influence over the physics. But no matter how under par you get, there's no celebration, only another hole. This continues until the game becomes literally impossible, like life.

99 cents%displayPrice% at %seller% Quirky and lovable, Doodle Jump is a fairly simple action game. A springy little creature called "Doodle the Doodler" bounces—all the time—and it's your job to make sure he lands on a firm platform every time he jumps. As he bounces, you guide him up through each level of the game. Tilt your iPhone, and he'll sway left or right with each successive bounce.

Free Blizzard may not make a ton of games, but the games they do make always have an impact. Starcraft turned real-time strategy into a televised sport. World of Warcraft created a massively multiplayer online world that's arguably better than the real world. Now, the Warcraft spin-off Hearthstone is proving that a virtual trading-card game can be arguably better than real-world card games. Even if you've never built a deck or played a single session of WoW, Hearthstone will still draw you in with its complex but approachable card battling system and not-horrible free-to-play features.

$4.99%displayPrice% at %seller% Translating existing game franchises to iOS has always been tricky. Not all games can make the leap from a console with controllers and buttons to nothing but a single touch screen. However, Hitman Go skillfully captures the essence of everyone's favorite bald assassin, Agent 47, in a more mobile-friendly form. You'll be shocked how much this slick series of strategy board games makes moving figures on a flat surface feel like sneakily murdering people.

$6.99%displayPrice% at %seller% Fighting games don't always work well on a mobile device, but Infinity Blade does, and sequel Infinity Blade II is even better. The gist of this swords-heavy combat game is you battle enemies and pick up gold that you find. Infinity Blade II also comes with a decent story line, so you learn about your hardened character and why he is a swordsman as you play. With great artwork, scenery, and levels, this game is one that all video game-loving iPhone owners should download. After the disappointing Infinity Blade III, this second installment remains the peak of the series.

$4.99%displayPrice% at %seller% The perilous platforming challenges of Leo's Fortune are so great they rival console classics like Rayman and Donkey Kong. Instead of running and jumping, players take on the role of a sentient pile of fuzz named Leo with the power to inflate and deflate himself on command. Looping levels force Leo to carefully control his momentum and size to solve puzzles and escape danger. If that's not enough, Leo's constant grandfatherly narration and the game's overall old-world atmosphere never cease to delight.—Next: Games Minecraft-Sword & Sworcery

Jill Duffy is a contributing editor, based in Washington, D.C., specializing in productivity apps and software, as well as apps and gadgets for health and fitness. She writes the weekly Get Organized column, with tips on how to lead a better digital life. Her book, Get Organized: How to Clean Up Your Messy Digital Life is available for Kindle, iPad, and other digital formats.
She also spoke at TED@250, a salon-style conference at TED.com headquarters, about how to better and more sanely manage email.
Before joining PCMag.com,...
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Former PCMag intern Jordan Minor is a junior software analyst who really just wants to use his fancy Northwestern University journalism degree to write about video games. He’s previously written for Kotaku, The A.V. Club, Cards Against Humanity, and 148Apps. In his spare time, he also writes dumb screenplays that occasionally become dumb movies. Follow Jordan on Twitter at @JordanWMinor.
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